The Commentariat -- July 29, 2014
Internal links removed.
** Juan Williams in the Hill: "A group of top evangelicals -- key supporters of the GOP for decades -- wrote to ask Congress last week to protect the children and offer them full consideration in court as refugees. But the GOP's obstructionism of anything the Obama White House proposes now stands in the way of faith-based compassion for these children. 'If Republicans move forward on this, we're now jumping in right in the middle of President Obama's nightmare and making it ours,' said Rep. John Fleming (R-La.).... Republicans are deaf to calls for mercy for children because they are playing for political gain." Williams puts the lie to all of the GOP's obstructionist arguments re: immigration reform.
Julian Hattem of the Hill: "Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) will introduce legislation on Tuesday to put sweeping new limits on U.S. surveillance and peel back the curtain on controversial spying programs."
Andrew Sorkin of the New York Times: "Jamie Dimon, the chief executive of JPMorgan Chase, recently said, 'I love America.' Lloyd Blankfein, the chief executive of Goldman Sachs, wrote an opinion article saying, 'Investing in America still produces the best return.' Yet guess who's behind the recent spate of merger deals in which major United States corporations have renounced their citizenship in search of a lower tax bill? Wall Street banks, led by JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs. Investment banks are estimated to have collected, or will soon collect, nearly $1 billion in fees over the last three years advising and persuading American companies to move the address of their headquarters abroad (without actually moving).... These deals are expected to sap the United States Treasury of $19.46 billion over the next decade...." These are the same Wall Street banks "which received help from American taxpayers in the form of hundreds of billions of dollars in loans." ...
... Treasury Secretary Jack Lew, in a Washington Post op-ed, urges Congress to act immediately to close the loophole that allows businesses to employ this tax inversion scheme. ...
... CW: See also Paul Krugman's column, linked yesterday. So who's a better American? Jamie Dimon or the kid at McDonalds? Corporations may be people, my friend, but they are people who do not wish to live in "real America." And, yes, you can blame Congress for letting these fake people get away this real travesty. ...
... Danny Vinik of the New Republic: "It's obvious why Republicans are so hostile to closing tax loopholes and cracking down on tax cheats: the IRS scandal, in which conservative organizations received inordinate scrutiny from the agency as it vetted groups claiming to be 'social welfare organizations.' Republicans argue that the agency cannot be trusted. 'There's not a whole lot of confidence right now about what the Internal Revenue Service does among the American people, let alone members of Congress,' Rep. Pat Tiberi told Politico. 'Why should we give them more tools to harass taxpayers?'" ...
... The Dog Will Eat My Homework. CW: So the standard excuse for the do-nothing Congress is now, "We can't trust Obama/the IRS/Immigration Services/the EPA/Whoever to properly execute the law, so passing legislation is a waste of time." Never mind that do-nothing fits right into their political scheme.
"Inflation OCD." Paul Krugman: "... there are two topics on which, in my experience, conservatives become completely unhinged, red-in-the-face angry and screaming. One is health care, where the possibility of a successful government-backed program is unacceptable despite the fact that everyone, even America for its seniors, does it, and the other is monetary policy. It's time to stop pretending that these are rational discussions, and start looking for the roots of the compulsion."
Martin Matishak of the Hill: "House and Senate negotiators have agreed to a $17 billion bill meant to reform the Veterans Affairs Department, setting up a scramble this week to send the legislation to President Obama's desk. The new bill would provide $10 billion for veterans to seek private care at hospitals and clinics outside the VA, and $5 billion to allow the department to hire more doctors, nurses and medical staff. Another $1.5 billion could be spent on leases to use other medical facilities at 27 sites around the country." ...
... Ramsey Cox of the Hill: "Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) announced Monday that the Senate would vote on the confirmation of Robert McDonald to be Veterans Affairs Secretary at 2:45 p.m. on Tuesday. Last week, the Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee cleared McDonald's nomination in a 14-0 vote."
Philip Bump of the Washington Post: It won't be long till we have political campaigns run entirely by superPACS, where "The candidate is just himself, and the PACs do everything else." Chris McDaniel's failed campaign for U.S. Senate in Alabama Mississippi came mighty close: 3/4ths of his campaign chest came from outside groups like Freedom Works & the Club for Growth. And the superPACS like it that way: "'In some ways, this race is kind of a model of what we want to do in other races,' FreedomWorks for America's national political director Russ Walker told us...."
Paul Waldman in the American Prospect: "Democrats used to marvel at Republicans' political skill. But it's been a decade since the GOP won a victory in policy or elections that wasn't pre-ordained by circumstance." ...
... CW: I'm not sure I agree with Waldman. It takes a lot of skill to run campaigns based on disinformation & lies -- and win. GOP candidates do that all the time. Plus, conservatives -- though not necessary party operatives -- have skillfully used the courts to obtain & enhance GOP objectives. I marvel every day at how such a bunch of dumbclucks & schemers manage to stay in office. It may just be the inertia & inattention of voters that get these morons re-elected, but I've gotta think the party's manipulation of the facts -- and the media -- plays a big part.
Adam Taylor of the Washington Post: "Anyone who has made even a passing glance at the Israeli media in the past few days will have noticed the incredible chorus of criticism being directed at John Kerry right now. The secretary of state has been lambasted by all sides for his apparent failure in attempts to negotiate a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas.... It all became so much that on Monday, the Obama administration was forced to push back against what it said was a "misinformation campaign' against Kerry."
Gillibrand Legitimizes Cruz. Burgess Everett of Politico: "Sens. Ted Cruz and Kirsten Gillibrand united on Monday to push a resolution condemning Hamas in its war against Israel, building on their burgeoning bipartisan alliance. The resolution from the Texas Republican and New York Democrat strongly criticizes Hamas for using 'innocent civilians as human shields,' tags Hamas and other terrorist groups with the blame for thousands of rocket attacks on Israel launched from Gaza and demands that Palestine Liberation Organization chairman Mahmoud Abbas condemn Hamas's tactics." ...
... Kevin Robillard of Politico: "Sen. Ted Cruz lifted his hold on State Department nominees after FAA officials briefed him this morning on their decision to bar U.S.-based airlines from flying to Israel for 36 hours last week.... 'Nevertheless, I remain concerned that the Administration was so willing to impose grave economic harm on our friend and ally Israel in order to try to pressure them into acceding to Secretary Kerry's foreign policy demands,' Cruz said."
** Maya Rhodan of Time: "A new report estimates the cost of mitigating the effects of climate change could rise by as much as 40% if action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is delayed 10 years -- immediately outweighing any potential savings of a delay. The White House's Council of Economic Advisers, U.S. President Barack Obama's source for advice on economic policy, compared over 100 actions on climate change laid out in 16 studies to extract the average cost of delayed efforts. Released Tuesday, the findings suggests policymakers should immediately confront carbon emissions as a form of 'climate insurance.'" ...
... Coral Davenport of the New York Times: "Failing to adequately reduce the carbon pollution that contributes to climate change could cost the United States economy $150 billion a year, according to an analysis by the White House Council of Economic Advisers released on Tuesday." ...
... Ari Phillips of Think Progress: "Going into their annual meeting in Dallas, Texas on Wednesday, ALEC -- the secretive organization that brings together conservative politicians and major corporate interests -- is looking to recalibrate their approach to repealing or obstructing a range of clean energy initiatives after a year of state-level defeats. The 40-year-old group, which has been pushing a corporate-backed, free market-driven agenda for decades, is beholden to a number of utilities and fossil fuel companies that bankroll them...." Thanks to Jeanne B. for the link. ...
... Meanwhile, Rep. Mike Kelly (R-Pa.) needs no advice from ALEC. He implied the EPA is a terrorist organization.
Daniel Strauss of TPM: "Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant (R) blamed President Barack Obama for a reported increase in uninsured Mississippians. The problem is, Bryant didn't acknowledge that he's been a staunch opponent of expanding Medicaid under Obamacare and refused to encourage enrolling in private coverage through Healthcare.gov." ...
... Paul Waldman in the Washington Post: "Which is like you offering me an umbrella, me saying, 'No thanks,' and then coming back later and saying, 'Why the hell did you offer me an umbrella? Look how wet I got in the rain! This is all your fault!'"
Jonathan Cohn of the New Republic finds a January 2010 e-mail from a top Congressional staffer working on the ACA which effectively refutes the Halbig plaintiffs' theory that Congress intended to offer Medicaid expansion funds only to residents of states that created their own exchanges.
Jonathan Chait writes a realistic assessment of Paul Ryan's new "anti-poverty plan." Ryan, in trying to reset himself as a compassionate conservative in anticipation of a probable presidential run, still engages in double-speak & non-answers to questions about the apparent central flaw in his plan: throwing money at the states & trusting them to spend that money on the poor:
... over the last few years, the United States has conducted a vast experiment that has proven his assumption wrong in the most horrifying way possible. Supreme Court Justice John Roberts allowed states to opt out of accepting Medicaid money to give health insurance to their poorest citizens. The money is, essentially, free.... In a display of almost fanatical indifference to the well-being of their most vulnerable citizens, nearly every Republican-controlled state government has eschewed this free money. Not only have state-level Republicans failed to display deep concern for the poor, they seem to actually enjoy subjecting them to intense physical and financial distress.
Satanists Have First Amendment Rights, Too. The Satanic Temple has found an amusing way to exploit [link fixed] the Supremes' Hobby Lobby decision, twisting it to favor abortion rights. Warning: actual science involved! Tara Culp-Ressler of Think Progress reports.
Meredith Shiner of Yahoo! News exposes the supposedly bipartisan advocacy group No Labels as a partisan lobbying scam. CW: This was pretty obvious from the get-go, but Shiner puts facts to the suspicions.
Black Women All Look Alike. Allie Jones of Gawker: "Buried in a New York Times piece about Rand Paul's efforts to woo black voters is the story of the most Mitt Romney thing Mitt Romney has ever done: confuse two famous black women in media. According to Donna Brazile, Romney called her 'Gwen' [as in Ifill] during the 2012 campaign." CW: Romney also mistook Michelle Obama for Oprah Winfrey & Serena Williams for Venus Williams. Oka-a-ay. We'll give him that last one.
Beyond the Beltway
Dana Milbank: After one of his constituents died partly because the local hospital closed when it couldn't get federal aid, a white Southern Republican mayor went on a pilgrimage to Washington, D.C., in support of the Medicaid expansion portion of the ACA. Gov. Pat McCrory (RTP) & the GOP-controlled state legislature -- including House speaker Thom Tillis who is the party's U.S. Senate nominee -- have blocked the expansion. CW: Note how the White House is totally tone-deaf here, ignoring a golden opportunity to demonstrate the importance of this law to Americans of every political persuasion. I never get over my surprise at Democratic incompetence.
Robert Barnes & Jenna Portnoy of the Washington Post: "A federal appeals court panel on Monday upheld a decision that said Virginia’s ban on same-sex marriage is unconstitutional. By a 2 to 1 vote, a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit in Richmond said that the fundamental right to marry is guaranteed under the Constitution regardless of sexual orientation." ...
... Andrew Kenney of the Raleigh News & Observer: "N.C. Attorney General Roy Cooper [D] believes that Monday's federal appeals court decision on Virginia's gay marriage ban eventually will allow gay marriage in North Carolina -- and Cooper has no plans to intervene.... However, the ruling won't immediately affect North Carolina because 'no judge has ruled on North Carolina's law,' Cooper said in a written statement. North Carolina voters in 2012 voted by a wide margin to encode a ban on gay marriage into the state's constitution. Cooper's decision will again bring him to loggerheads with the General Assembly's leadership. The leaders of the state Senate and House last year hired outside lawyers to look over the attorney general's shoulder in gay-marriage cases.... Cooper previously has said that he personally supports same-sex marriage but would defend the state's laws."
Thomas Kaplan & Susanne Craig of the New York Times: New York "Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo on Monday delivered a feisty and unrepentant defense of his handling of an anticorruption panel he created and then abruptly shut down, after five days in seclusion during which he encountered some of the harshest criticism he has faced as governor.... His office had defended its actions in a 13-page response that appeared online along with The Times's report. On Monday, he echoed many of those points, but also seemed to contradict them. His revised defenses for his office's handling of the anticorruption panel, called the Moreland Commission, seemed increasingly difficult to untangle." ...
... Lloyd Green of the Daily Beast: Cuomo's "disbanding of an anti-corruption commission was shocking -- and his straight-out-of-Nixon justification even more so." Green compares Cuomo's arrogance to that of Louis XIV.
Tina Moore of the Daily News: "Police are investigating whether a cop put a seven-months-pregnant woman in a chokehold while busting her for illegal grilling in Brooklyn -- an incident caught on film. Photos released Monday by an East New York advocacy group show Rosan Miller, 27, struggling with a cop who appears to have his arm around her neck. The NYPD prohibits the use of chokeholds." CW: Chokehold aside, this looks like a case of Grilling While Black.
Congressional Races
Nate Cohn of the New York Times notes that polls show that among registered voters (as opposed to likely voters), there is no "Republican wave"; rather, Democrats have gained a bit. This does not mean that Republicans can't take control of the Senate because "This year's Senate contests are being fought on Republican-leaning turf."
Ben Jacobs of the Daily Beast: "Joni Ernst, the Republican nominee for U.S. Senate in Iowa, appears to believe states can nullify federal laws. In a video obtained by The Daily Beast, Ernst said on September 13, 2013 at a for[u]m held by the Iowa Faith & Freedom Coalition that Congress should not pass any laws 'that the states would consider nullifying.' As a state senator, Ernst co-sponsored a "Tenther" resolution "States cannot nullify federal laws, of course. In embracing the concept of nullification, Ernst harkens back to a discredited theory that the Constitution is a compact and states are free to void federal laws that they dislike. This view was widely promoted by John Calhoun, the great Southern advocate of slavery prior to the Civil War and was touted by segregationists in the 1950s and 1960s." ...
... Steve M. acknowledges that Jacobs' characterization of Ernst's remarks aren't quite fair. Then he produces a partial list of laws that by Ernst's logic -- that the Congress should not pass laws states might consider nullifying -- should never have been passed. Steve begins with the Bill of Rights.
I'm not sure why the National Review's leaking of Georgia Democratic Senate candidate Michelle Nunn's old campaign strategy book is such big news, but everybody's reporting on it, so here's the NR story, by Eliana Johnson. ...
... Update. Alex Altman of Time: "... the memos are a classic example of what is known in Washington as a Kinsley gaffe: when a politician errs by accidentally revealing the truth.... The existence of the memos is not a surprise; any campaign worth its salt undertakes a study of its perceived weaknesses. The Nunn memos are remarkable less for their judgments than for the fact that a hapless adviser apparently posted them on the Internet.... When you're trying to sell a candidate as authentic, a long look at the careful packaging can't help." ...
... CW: Really? I believe I'll pull a Diogenes & go in search of the voter who thinks political candidates are "authentic."
Marie's Sports Report
Nathan Fenno of the Los Angeles Times: "A judge gave Shelly Sterling a sweeping victory Monday afternoon and cleared the way for Steve Ballmer's record $2-billion purchase of the Clippers to proceed. In a tentative oral decision, Judge Michael Levanas ruled in Sterling's favor on all three counts and rejected virtually all of Donald Sterling's arguments in the probate trial in Los Angeles Superior Court."
News Ledes
Minneapolis Star Tribune: "Jesse Ventura won his defamation case against the estate of author Chris Kyle, a former U.S. Navy SEAL who said he punched out the former Minnesota governor for criticizing the SEALs' role in the Iraq war. The jury awarded a total of $1.845 million: $500,000 in defamation damages and $1.345 million for 'unjust enrichment.' ... Jurors could not reach a unanimous verdict, as instructed. Instead, with the consent of both sides, they voted 8 to 2 in Ventura's favor."
AP: "A senior PLO official has called for a 24-hour humanitarian cease-fire in the Gaza war, saying he is also speaking in the name of Hamas."
Guardian: "Gaza endured a night of relentless bombardment that brought some of the heaviest pounding since the start of the conflict three weeks ago, in the hours after the Israeli political and military leadership warned of a protracted offensive. Palestinian officials say more than 110 people have been killed in Gaza in the past 24 hours."
Share Article
Reader Comments (13)
@Marie: I just want to say how much I appreciated the anecdote about your encounter with the McDonald's worker who had one arm. It was a moving illustration of who the real American heroes are. To answer your question posed above: I vote for the kid at McDonald's as the "better American" over Mr. Dimon and his ilk. Not a hard choice at all.
Your story also reminds me to count to ten before I even think if showing impatience with service workers.
I hope your road trip brought you to a lovely place.
@ Marie: Chris McDaniel ran in the other fucked up and arguably worse state in the South - Mississippi. Alabama is next door, home to Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III and Richard Shelby.
As folks in Georgia like to say: "Thank God for Alabama, otherwise, we'd be right next door to Mississippi!"
The link to the Satanic Temple story brings us back to the Chait article on Ryan.
I second Victoria's remarks.
CW says: " Personally, I marvel every day at how such a bunch of dumbclucks & schemers manage to stay in office. It may just be the inertia & inattention of voters that get these morons re-elected, but I've gotta think the party's manipulation of the facts -- and the media -- plays a big part."
When Romney was running he told great big whoppers and some of them stayed put there among the populace for a good long time like his lie about the Jeep corporation moving to China.Even when Jeep came out and repudiated that statement Romney continued saying it until Jeep people came out again, this time with vitriol and amazement that this lie should have been able to have such legs.
I want to upchuck after reading about Dimon and Blanfein's, those two supposedly upstanding Americans, schemes to once again screw this nation of its rightful taxes. It's enough that Walgreen has become all Swissy on us (I'll be damned if I set foot in another one of their stores). So when those Wallies are singing god bless America their fucking fingers are always crossed.
CW says: " Personally, I marvel every day at how such a bunch of dumbclucks & schemers manage to stay in office. It may just be the inertia & inattention of voters that get these morons re-elected, but I've gotta think the party's manipulation of the facts -- and the media -- plays a big part."
When Romney was running he told great big whoppers and some of them stayed put there among the populace for a good long time like his lie about the Jeep corporation moving to China.Even when Jeep came out and repudiated that statement Romney continued saying it until Jeep people came out again, this time with vitriol and amazement that this lie should have been able to have such legs.
I want to upchuck after reading about Dimon and Blanfein's, those two supposedly upstanding Americans, schemes to once again screw this nation of its rightful taxes. It's enough that Walgreen has become all Swissy on us (I'll be damned if I set foot in another one of their stores). So when those Wallies are singing god bless America their fucking fingers are always crossed.
One more comment on Marie's question about how lying conservatives keep getting elected with campaigns of disinformation and subterfuge.
Just look at one of the other pieces linked here today. Danny Vinik's piece in the New Republic repeats the wingnut party line wholesale, regarding "...the IRS scandal, in which conservative organizations received inordinate scrutiny from the agency..."
The point here is twofold. First, progressive organizations went under the microscope as well, a highly inconvenient fact for conservatives that has been totally erased by right-wing pundits and media outlets. Second, if there were more conservative groups examined than progressives, and I don't know for a fact that that's the case, it would be because right-wing groups are far more likely to claim tax exempt status they should not receive, dirty tricks being their raison d'etre. How is it possible that groups like American Crossroads, a blatantly political organization designed for the sole purpose of winning elections and stifling opposing points of view, can be considered a "social welfare" organization? Any IRS investigator not questioning that should be fired.
And the fact that Darrell Issa and his wingnut bloodhounds have been snooping under IRS beds for years trying to find proof of any actual conspiracy to target conservative groups, and finding exactly nothing, is never mentioned by hardly anyone in the MSM.
But "They're all out to get conservatives, especially the IRS" has become an immutable idée fixe, one so deeply embedded that one has practically to be inoculated by some kind of truth serum in order to avoid its reference, and truth serums are not exactly being handed out on street corners by right-wing apparatchiks.
Just the opposite.
So conservatives have made an art of dissembling, dissimulation, prevarication, and chicanery.
Which is one reason morons, assholes, mendacious malcontents, mean-ass misogynists, religious nuts, fact deniers of all stripes, and floppy-shoed circus clowns, keep getting elected.
That, and too many voters take their bullshit at face value (largely because other media outlets don't dare call them on it). They're peddling rat dung and calling it ambrosia.
What a country.
And on the topic of the sociopathic obstructionism of the GOP (So what if kids suffer? We have to score some points.), just imagine the howls of indignation and moral outrage had the Democratic Party made a point of stating, outright, during the Bush Debacle, that they weren't going to vote for any White House initiatives for the sole reason that they were proposed by George W. Bush.
Every congressional Democrat would be called up not just for impeachment but for impalement.
The fact is that too many Democrats voted for too many unconscionable things proposed by the cross eyed Little King.
How they get away this is far, far, far beyond me. Even with the complicity of the media, by turns supine, docile, and aggressively bellicose and viciously partisan, their actions (or inactions, to be more precise) and the reasons for them are so obvious as to be embarrassing.
Unless you're a conservative, I suppose.
Or an imbecile.
But, I repeat myself.
@ P.D. Pepe. Thanks. Link fixed.
@ Unwashed. Thanks. Correction made.
Marie
I concur that the MSM, print and broadcast, is enormously culpable for the race-to-the-bottom in current governance. Unfortunately, there has to be an appetite among consumers for fomenting this slop that outweighs the hunger for responsible, smart reporting. That question is weighed in dollars and the money comes down on the side of slop.
It's hard to decipher whether the immense vitriol that has been thrust on the Obama Presidency is a bigger factor than the irresponsibility of the MSM. Its always been obvious that race would be a core issue of this Presidency. What really put the cherry on top was the fact that Obama is everything the wing nuts aspire toward and fail miserably. He embodies, as does his family, all those Horatio Alger, apple pie, all American values. Lord have mercy. If only he had been more like Huggy Bear and smoked him some crack once in awhile and gotten the random White House BJ, he could be much more palpable. Probably the most annoying thing to me, which has been embraced by a wide range of writers, is the "failure" of his temperament. I find the constant angst over his "coldness" completely ludicrous. In every instance of a major national event/tragedy, Obama has been compassionate and comforting. He is the leader of a nation, not class president at PS 109.
Diane,
I think the "Obama is cold" crowd probably want him to be more kind and empathetic. Like Dick Cheney, maybe.
The fight between neighbors to determine which one is wackier continues:
"Pray God blocks EPA plan, chief regulator of Alabama utilities tells consumers" per AL.com at http://www.al.com/news/index.ssf/2014/07/post_14.html
How dare the gummint them how to use what god put there for them to use as they see fit. I guess god deliberately put Georgia downwind too.
"We will not stand for what they are doing to our way of life in Alabama," said PSC President Twinkle Andress Cavanaugh. "We will take our fight to the EPA."
That's right. Her name is Twinkle. Almost as bad as Jefferson Beauregard...
Twinkle? Not too bad. Coulda been Tinkle.